


Renewal

by jenny_wren



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: #coulsonlives, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-20
Updated: 2014-08-20
Packaged: 2018-02-13 22:12:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2167077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenny_wren/pseuds/jenny_wren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coulson is still alive and things are still broken, this time around there might be some hope (sequel to Break-it, less angsty version)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Break-It](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2116602) by [jenny_wren](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenny_wren/pseuds/jenny_wren). 



> This is a follow up to Break-It. I thought it stood well alone but I had a couple of queries for a sequel. Break-It was fairly open ended, mostly because I wasn't sure how things worked out. This is the less angsty version. It is an AU to Broken.
> 
> This will make no sense if you don't read Break-It first (it's short, promise)

Phil knew immediately that Clint wasn’t coming back. He could see the same knowledge in Natasha’s the face, the way she turned white and left the room without looking at him. 

Phil couldn’t face the arguments, and he presumed Natasha couldn’t either, so he allowed the others to fuss and panic, call the hospitals and morgues, call Clint’s colleagues, trace the phone, track his credit cards, and hack all the CCTV in the city – never let it be said that Stark couldn’t fuss and panic as extravagantly as he did everything else. 

Finally though it became inescapable that it was deliberate and intentional and Clint simply wasn’t coming back. All the Avengers stopped talking to Phil at that point. He didn’t blame them. The fact that he hadn’t expected the deception to hurt Clint so badly was no excuse when faced with such clear evidence of the contrary.

Phil hid himself in his work.

He didn’t deserve to be involved in the search. It was after all his fault. Nick had apologized to him for his part in starting the deception, but Phil wasn’t going to blame his old friend for what had been Phil’s own decision. Phil had agreed to continue the lie; it wasn’t anybody’s fault but his.

That didn’t mean he didn’t desperately want to know how the search was going. Denying himself that luxury was only justice.

But late one night when his office seemed more than usually empty and silent and he couldn’t bear to look at the couch that lacked an irreverent archer for one second longer, he crept out past his assistant half asleep at his desk and took a taxi to the Avengers Tower.

Breaking in should have been an impossibility, but Phil knew Clint and Clint didn’t live anywhere he couldn’t climb into or out of. The only one who’d know to close down Clint’s escape route would be Natasha, and she was sentimentally Russian about such things.

So – with rather more being suspended in midair than he would have chosen. Phil did not have Clint’s head for heights – he managed to get inside.

JARVIS was on to him immediately of course but he and JARVIS had an understanding, and Tony appeared not to have gone to the lengths of barring him from the Tower. JARVIS just huffed and directed to him to Clint’s suite and what he called the War Room.

The War Room had been the lounge. It had been stripped of anything loungeable and an enormous office table and numerous white boards had taken up residence. A large map of the continental US was spread over the table, labelled carefully with brightly colored pushpins that matched up with grainy stills from CCTV.

Phil stared at the map, trying to work out the pattern he was seeing.

“What the hell are you doing here?” someone demanded.

Phil was so far in his own head he jumped guiltily, turning around to find Stark watching him with dark suspicious eyes.

“JARVIS called you.”

“Of course J called me. I would have got Natasha but we’ve only just finished fixing up the Tower since the last Doombot attack.”

Phil flinched.

“So tell me G-man, why are you here?”

Phil didn’t want to explain himself, wasn’t sure he could not even to himself, so he just ignored Stark’s bluster, “You’ve seen the pattern, right?”

“Pattern?”

“To Clint’s movements.”

“There is no pattern. Do you think we haven’t been looking? Natasha’s in here every day staring at the map practically incinerating it with her eyes. There is no super-secret spy pattern so don’t even try it.”

Phil laughed softly, tracing a curve gently across the map, “It isn’t a spy pattern, Stark, it’s a circus pattern. He’s following the route Carsons used to take.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“No. I don’t expect he’s doing it consciously, and he’s not hitting all the stops, or maybe he’s just not visible at all of them, but the route, that’s Carsons.”

“How do you even know that?”

“I know a lot of things about my agents, Stark.”

“Except how they’ll feel about you faking your death for a year.” The words were aggressive, the tone wasn’t. Stark almost sounded kind.

“Yes,” Phil agreed, “except that.”

Stark laughed and shook his head. He moved further into the room, looking at the map and pulling out a tablet to find out where Clint was going to appear next. Phil could have told him but he was all out of words for the moment and it wouldn’t take Stark long to find the information now he was looking for it.

“I guess I better be going,” said Phil eventually, wishing he could stay.

“Yes, yes,” said Stark quickly. “Now we have an actual lead we can’t afford to waste the time it would take for you and Natasha to have a throw down. Get going. And next time use the elevator like a civilized human being.”

Phil drifted away quietly, not bothering to say goodbye to the genius who wasn’t listening to him anyway, something inside him just a little bit lighter at the thought of a next time.


	2. Chapter 2

A month later Stark invaded his office.

“Yes?” said Phil, waving away his flustered, apologizing assistant who had clearly failed to hold off the one man invasion.

Stark kicked the door shut with foot, strode across the room, and collapsed onto the couch.

Phil glared.

Stark smirked, “You and Natasha have the exact same Clint-twitch.”

“What?”

“This little tic just below your right eye. Bruce cooked Natasha borscht the other day to try and cheer her up. You know what she said, _I don’t like borscht._ Which is such a total lie.”

Stark was still sitting on the couch. Phil glared harder. “It’s not a lie, Natasha hates borscht.”

“Seriously?” Stark laughed delightedly, “I knew it was a Clint thing but I didn’t realize it was that bad.”

Phil could explain that the recipe for borscht Clint used when he cooked for her had mutated significantly from the standard over the years, most notably in its complete lack of beetroot, potatoes or beef, and the heavy handed use of curry powder, but if Natasha hadn’t said anything, Phil wasn’t going to spill her secrets.

Stark was still sitting on the couch, and still talking, “And her eye twitched violently, just like yours is doing now.” He jabbed one finger at Phil accusingly.

“Mr Stark, was there a point to this meeting? Or are you just continuing in your mission to spread annoyance on a global scale.”

“Hey, I can’t go for a twofer? I can multitask you know?” And Stark finally got up from Clint’s couch and lounged across the room to take the chair in front of Phil’s desk. Then he put his feet up on his desk.

“Well the annoyance-spreading is going well, but I’ve yet to see evidence of a point.”

“Okay then G-man, you called it with the circus thing. But, as I’m sure you’ve figured by now, it hasn’t panned out. We had a couple of near misses, and now he’s switched tactics.”

“Probably running loan on cash,” Phil agreed.

“What? The way Natasha tells it he was walking around with half a bank stashed in his jacket pockets.”

“And he had his boots on that day.”

“Is that significant?”

“Diamonds from his mercenary days wedged in the heels.” Phil had to sit through Clint cursing and catching his fingers with the knife as he hollowed out the heel whenever he replaced his boots, because Clint claimed the only place he could be sure he wasn’t being watched was Phil’s office.

“So how could he be running out of money?”

“I didn’t say running out of money, I said running low on money. Clint’s a survivor he’d never let his stash run down. The fact he was actually willing to break into it is telling enough.” Clint would only have done that for a life or death situation. That Phil had pushed him to such a point was not something Phil could stand to think about very often.

“And Natasha wouldn’t know this?” Stark squinted at him suspiciously.

He smiled fondly, “Natasha doesn’t do money, that’s Clint’s job. Clint’s been managing a budget since he was eight. Natasha had anything she needed for the job supplied and she wasn’t allowed to have anything that wasn’t needed for the job. Which kept things horribly simple.” 

Phil checked the reflection in the glass of the picture across the room, and was pleased to see the intent look that meant Stark was paying attention. He continued,

“When she joined SHIELD it took forever for Clint to convince her to buy something she wanted just because she wanted it. Then of course it was like a switch had been flipped and she kitted out her whole apartment twice. It took us a year and a half to pay that off.”

“Us?”

“Me and Clint. It was expensive as hell but she was enjoying herself so much we couldn’t bear to stop her.”

“Legolas was demoted when he brought her in.”

“Yes.”

“That meant a pay cut, right?”

“Yes.” He wasn’t quite sure where this was going.

“And even a top grade field agent he barely gets paid anything at all. So it must have mostly been you paying that off.”

Phil flushed, “It’s not like I have anything else to spend it on. And that is not the point.”

“No? So what is the point?”

The point was making sure somebody would be watching out for Natasha now Clint wasn’t there. There was only so much Phil could sign off on expenses.

“I don’t know Stark. I’m hoping you’ll get there before I fall asleep from boredom.”

“Ouch, I’m hurt. Or I would be if it wasn’t three o’clock in the morning, I thought my sleeping habits were bad. So my point is, is there anything you can tell us that will make him easier to find? I have a couple of algorithms trawling the net for mentions of particularly successful bow-hunters. I have a dozen investigators working across the Midwest keeping an eye out. Pepper and Steve – and let me tell you that is a scary combination of earnest efficiency, they should probably be separated for the safety of the world – are arranging a series of archery competitions. Don’t look at me like that, we’re keeping it very low key and it will be sponsored by one of the subsidiaries that isn’t called Stark. I know, I know, I’m surprised that one exists too, but there you go, something Dad didn’t actually get his name on. Why are you rolling your eyes at me?” 

“Because you’re being ridiculous. Clint isn’t going to have anything to do with bows. He’ll probably steer clear of rifles too.”

“Now you’re just blowing smoke. I didn’t need Natasha to tell me Clint loves his bow like it’s another hand, arm, whatever. No forget that, that’s a creepy simile”

“Focus Stark. And yes Clint loves his bow, it’s his most identifiable feature. And what is Clint trying to do, right at this moment?”

“Hide,” Stark admitted sulkily.

“Exactly. Even if he assumes SHIELD aren’t looking for him, Hydra would love nothing better than to get their hands on an assassin to replace the one they’ve lost. He wouldn’t do anything to draw that kind of heat down on himself.” 

Which was all sound, logical and true, and meant he didn’t have to say out loud that Clint had walked away from everything and Phil had the awful feeling that included the bows he loved so much.

“So how the hell are we going to find him then?” Stark yelled in exasperation.

“I – don’t – know.” 

“Well you seem to know everything else. Want to give the rest of us a clue.”

Phil sighed, and thought about it. “Trick riding,” he said finally.

“What?”

“Trick riding. Clint can’t help but be exceptional at something, he enjoys a challenge too much. If he’s not shooting, he’ll be riding. Clint shot from horse-back as part of his act and he helped out the riding troupe. Jumping from one horse to another while racing around the ring, standing in the saddle, hand-standing in the saddle. They had a whole little one act play with an evil villain and his bandits, a beautiful damsel in distress, a heroic hero and such like.”

“Clint took to heroing at a young age then.”

“Oh no. He was the evil villain. Much trickier than being the hero. They gave him actual bullets instead of blanks so he could dramatically shoot stuff and he had to fall off his horse when he died, and I’d really like to have words with them about that because that was stupidly dangerous. Also he was only fifteen and if he hadn’t been able to wear a mask he’d have looked too young to even be up there, which again I’d really like to have words with them about.”

“Right.” Stark was watching him with narrow eyes.

“What?” Phil snapped, feeling exposed and not understanding why.

Stark huffed a deep breath. “Right,” he slapped his hands on his thighs and slowly stood up, “I have to go explain to Pepper and Steve that they are now organizing a series of low key trick riding competitions.”

“Good luck with that,” Phil smirked.

Stark snorted and left.

Phil looked at the pile of work he had to complete but, actually, he was feeling tired for once. He yawned, stretched his stiff back, and eyed the couch across the room. He didn’t think Clint would mind if he borrowed it for a little while.


End file.
